Thursday, 22 November 2012

Chaos Marine Analysis - Huron Blackheart

I'm off to Marlow for the weekend tomorrow, and I don't know how much internet access I'll have, so I'll get a post out now.

Straight off, I can say that I really like Huron. I'm going to go through who he is and what he does first, and then how much he costs will come in further in.

Just as you'd expect he comes in Power Armour and has the usual grenades, but he also has a couple of other pieces of wargear too. First off he gets a Power Axes, which is nearly always useful (I say nearly for a reason), but then he comes with a 4+ Invulnerable too.

As for his special rules, he comes with Champion of Chaos (of course), Fearless (expected, but nice all the same) and Veterans of the Long War (odd considering he's not pre-heresy, but I'll take it). He also has a pretty beastly statline. Take a normal marine's statline, now compared to that he has +2 weapon skill, which is handy, a better ballistic skill but without a shooting weapon I'm not really going to mention that, although he can get psychic goodness. Anyway, +2 wounds, +1 initiative and +2 leadership. The leadership we don't care about because he's fearless anyway, unless mindshackle scarabs or the Doom of Malan'Tai can still effect him. I'll have to check that out when I'm back in Sheffield and have my 40k library. But anyway, onto what makes him interesting.

Firstly, he comes with a pre decided Warlord trait, as in D3 infantry units in your army can infiltrate. There are some nasty things that you can do with that, especially with a Codex that likes being up close as much as Chaos. Bear in mind that allies can't infiltrate, as only battle brothers can benefit from an ally's Warlord trait and Daemons can't infiltrate anyway.

Into the middle of the spectrum of things that he does well, here comes some psychic ability. Huron brings with him a special little Familiar. This makes him a psyker and allows him to roll on a random psychic discipline table every turn, but with no Primaris powers. I think this is a nice little gimmick to have, it can be useful in the right circumstances with the right power but anyone who reads this blog regularly will probably know that I'm not a fan of random, I like to keep things as predictable/reliable as possible in my army from a competitive standpoint. The psyker level is nice though, no-one can say no to an improved deny the witch. The Familiar also counts as a combat Familiar too, meaning +2 S4 attacks. Whoop! No seriously although it doesn't sound terrifying it's always nice to have more attacks, especially at Huron's Weapon Skill.

Now, as well as giving these force multiplication benefits, he is also a monster in close combat, as well as having the Axe to deal with Terminator equivalents (although I wouldn't recommend throwing him against these as they'll kill him instantly with the amount of Power Fist, etc attacks they're likely to have, no eternal warrior for him) he also comes with a special lightning claw. It is essentially the same as a standard except that it gives Huron +2 to his strength, which is really nice, and it has armourbane, meaning that charging a walker into him to tie him up is a bad idea. It doesn't stop here though, it also has an in built heavy flamer, which makes a good deterrent against charging him. Plus VOTLW is a nice bonus on him for extra close combat pain.

I'm sorry I haven't gone into too much detail with this, I haven't even scratched the surface really, with fearless and how best he could be used still left untouched. I'm trying to ease myself back into this after this week's coursework blast. However, I can say that I'll probably be including Huron in my Chaos list, he's well costed, fun, and a good all rounder, which is very much what I'm looking for with my Chaos. Oh, that's a point, he's 5pts less than Fabius Bile. So at that rate, I'd say he's a good buy.

The next post should be up on Monday, and when I start delving into some of the other special characters, I'll go through them and the unit that they unlock as troops in 1 post.

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